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[[Image:Kida_d.gif|right|frame|[[Kid A In Alphabet Land]]]]{{Top}}[[pulsion ]] de [[mort]]]]''; |-|| [[German]]: ''[[Todestrieb{{Bottom}}
==Sigmund Freud==
[[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] introduced the [[concept]] of the [[death drive]] in ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]'' (1920).
[[Lacan]] follows [[Freud]] in reaffirming the concept of the [[death drive]] as central to [[psychoanalysis]]:
<blockquote>"To ignore the [[death instinct]] in his [Freud's] [[doctrine]] is to misunderstand that doctrine entirely."<ref>{{E}} p. 301</ref></blockquote>
In [[Lacan]]'s first remarks on the [[death drive]], in 1938, he describes it as a [[nostalgia]] for a [[preoedipal|lost harmony]], a [[desire]] to [[return]] to the [[preoedipal|preoedipal fusion]] with the [[mother]]'s [[breast]], the [[castration|loss]] of which is marked on the [[psyche]] in the [[complex|weaning complex]].<ref>{{1938}} p. 35</ref>
By linking the [[death drive]] with the [[preoedipal phase]] and with [[narcissism]], these early remarks would [[place ]] the [[death drive]] in what [[Lacan]] later comes to call the [[imaginary order]].
However, when [[Lacan]] begins to develop his concept of the [[order|three orders]] of [[imaginary]], [[symbolic]] and [[real]], in the 1950s, he does not situate the [[death drive]] in the [[imaginary]] but in the [[symbolic]].
In the [[seminar]] of 1954-5, for example, he argues that the [[death drive]] is simply the fundamental tendency of the [[symbolic order]] to produce [[repetition]]:
<blockquote>"The [[death drive|death instinct]] is only the mask of the [[symbolic order]]."<ref>{{S2}} p. 326</ref></blockquote>
By situating the [[death drive]] firmly in the [[symbolic]], [[Lacan]] articulates it with [[culture ]] rather than [[nature]]; he states that the [[death drive]] "is not a question of bjologybiology,"<ref>{{E}} p. 102</ref>, and must be distinguished from the [[biological]] [[instinct]] to return to the inanimate.<ref>{{S7}} p. 211-12</ref>
[[Freud]] opposed the [[death drive]] to the [[sexual]] [[drive]]s, but now [[Lacan]] argues that the [[death drive]] is not a [[separate ]] [[drive]], but is in fact an aspect of every [[drive]].
<blockquote>"The [[distinction ]] between the [[death drive|life drive]] and the [[death drive]] is - [[true ]] in as much as it manifests two aspects of the [[drive]]."<ref>{{S11}} p. 257</ref></blockquote>
Hence [[Lacan]] writes that "every [[drive]] is virtually a [[death drive]]" because:
# every [[drive]] pursues its own extinction,
# every [[drive]] involves the [[subject ]] in [[repetition]], and
# every [[drive]] is an attempt to go beyond the [[pleasure principle]], to the realm of [[excess]] ''[[jouissance]]'' where [[enjoyment]] is experienced as [[sadism|suffering]].<ref>{{Ec}} p. 844</ref>
{{See}}
* [[Biology]]
{{Also}}
<references/>
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[[Category:Freudian psychology]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Terms]]
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